Mourning Band
by Liv Wilder
Summary: One-shot episode insert for 3x24 "Knockout" explaining how Castle and Beckett reconciled before attending the funeral. "He stares at her as she adds an extra bobby pin to secure her bun, before she drops her arms to her sides and turns her full gaze upon him. "Castle, for the love of God. Spit it out." "I…I've never seen you in uniform before," he stammers. COMPLETE


_A/N: This story is actually lighter than the title suggests. I stumbled upon a wealth of NYPD Patrol Guides yesterday, and this is what came of it. I should really ban myself from the internet!_

_Anyway, it's basically an episode insert for 3x24 "Knockout" to explain how Castle and Beckett reconciled before attending the funeral, following their argument and Roy's shooting in the days before. I hope you enjoy._

* * *

_"Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,_  
_Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone._  
_Silence the pianos and with muffled drum_  
_Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come."_

-_Funeral Blues_, WH Auden

* * *

**Mourning Band**

The light rap on her door signals his arrival. It's a call for attention that falls somewhere between knocking and tapping; so hesitant and reluctant a sound it is, as if the culprit has minimal desire to gain entry after all. As if he'd really rather be somewhere else entirely.

Drumming, beating, banging, striking, hitting…yeah, hitting is good. Now _those_ are sounds that demand entry. And Kate Beckett wants to hit something all right. She wants to go into the Precinct gym and knock the crap out of a punch bag right this second. Maybe spar with Esposito, since he's the only one who's never made allowances for her being female, for her frame, her reach or her size. She'd hit that bag until her knuckles bled inside their protective wrappings.

If only she could.

Instead, she is standing in front of her hall mirror preparing to open the door to a man she threw out of her apartment just days ago. She is preparing to open the door to her partner, a relationship no less weak or deserving of the title for its lack of official seal or contract. She's also preparing to face up to the next piece of her personal life history by allowing him access inside her home; setting in train a day of mourning she will never forget. She's preparing to stand tall and proud, to be brave and stalwart. She's preparing to bury her mentor and Captain, and with him the sins of the father.

She's preparing to say goodbye.

* * *

Castle stands awkwardly on her welcome mat, his hands stuffed into his pants pockets, head bowed down towards the floor. A shaft of light hits his shiny black dress shoes before rising inexorably upwards to scan his frame like a laser the wider she opens the front door.

"All set?"

She's not. Nowhere near. And is _"all set"_ something you can even become on a day like this?

She can tell from the look in his eyes that he's disappointed with himself. He's disappointed by his own stupidity - the poor choice of words from a man who makes a healthy living from knowing the perfect thing to say at exactly the right time. _Always._

"I'm sorry," he adds in earnest, looking back down at the floor. "Stupid—" he mutters, his voice petering away to nothing.

"You'd better come in," Kate tells him quietly.

She turns away to return to her bedroom before the words are completely out of her mouth, leaving it up to him whether he enters her home or not. She's on edge, distracted, her head filled up with grieving and the role she's about to undertake.

It's only once she's back in front of her bureau, fishing bobby pins out of a little ceramic pot on her bedroom dresser, that she absorbs the quiet in her apartment. There's a man in here, her partner, Richard Castle, talker extraordinaire, her…_whatever_. She's no longer alone and yet it's still too quiet. Their grief sits heavily upon them, their sense of guilt even more so. Kate bears hers as obviously as a prayer shawl draped around her shoulders, imagining people could see the turmoil she's in when she left the dry cleaner this morning with her plastic-wrapped dress blues draped over her arm.

When she gathered her little team here the other day, impressing upon them the rules they must follow: "No one outside of this immediate family ever needs to know about this. As far as the world is concerned, Roy Montgomery died a hero. We owe it to him. All of us." she had looked around at her grief-stricken friends, eyes smudged with darkness like bruises, lines deepened. Their loss was written like a story on their faces, and now that story must continue to play out.

* * *

"Kate?"

She startles. He's outside her half-open bedroom door. She's trying to hold it all in, to keep her emotions in check for the next few hours at least, get through, numb but professional, drawing on the experience of every funeral she's ever attended, every death notification she's ever had to make.

"Castle, what do you want?"

The question comes out harsher than she intended, and the earlier silence descends again, muffling, suffocating as a blanket.

"Nothing. Sorry, I'll just—"

She thinks or imagines she hears him say something like _"wait out in the hall"_ as he leaves her bedroom doorway and moves further out into her apartment.

"_Castle,_" she sighs loudly, raising her voice in exasperation to make sure he hears her the first time, not in any mood to repeat herself. She could yell, she could scream. Oh, yeah, she could do that. She has lungful's of air and plenty of stamina to expend on that task, for yelling. But here is not the place and now is sadly not the time.

After her mother died she took the subway out to Luna Park one grey, blustery day, rode the Coney Island Cyclone three times, and screamed until she was sick. The sight of a teenage girl at a funfair vomiting on the grass drew few glances. The tears streaming down her cheeks went largely unnoticed. She returned to Manhattan a couple of hours later feeling hollowed out and exhausted, a husk of her normal self, but her urge to scream had been silenced, sated, and that's all that counted at that time. Whatever it took to get her though the day is what she gifted herself. Whatever her body or her mind asked for – she gave in, she acquiesced, in order to survive.

Her dad did the same, though when he named his poison, things got a little too real too fast, and one was never enough. There was no slaking his thirst.

"Just…would you come in?" she huffs now, when she hears him hovering outside her bedroom door again, dark as a specter, that loose, pesky floorboard giving him up like a ten-dollar snitch.

"_What?_" she asks, exasperated, once he's standing inside her bedroom, but still saying nothing.

He stares at her as she adds an extra bobby pin to secure her bun, before she drops her arms to her sides and turns her full gaze upon him. "Castle, for the love of God. Spit it out."

"I…I've never seen you in uniform before," he stammers. "I just—"

"If you make a wise crack right now, I swear…"

He holds his hands up immediately in a gesture of surrender, almost as if she'd instructed him to freeze. Maybe it's the uniform, she thinks, with some strange, unexpected burst of amusement.

"No. No, absolutely not. Nothing like that. You look…so…so—"

"Cat got your tongue? I look what, Castle? Fat, sexy, scary? They say TV adds ten pounds. But I tell you, put this polyester nightmare on… Well, let's just say I didn't get asked out on a whole lot of dates while I was in uniform."

Castle frowns and shakes his head. "I think you look amazing," he says in a tone of wonder.

Great. Even Castle's contradictions come in a tone of wonder and awe, so she can't even attack him for that.

She decides to let the subject drop. "Thanks. Did you want something?"

"Want?" He looks puzzled or confused.

"Yeah, when you came to the bedroom door. I thought you wanted to ask me something."

"Oh. Oh, that. Yeah."

"_Well?_" asks Kate, raising her eyebrows interrogatively.

"Oh, right. So, I just thought we should maybe clear the air…after the other night."

"The other night?"

"Mm."

Kate shakes her head. "Help me out here." She's nervous as hell, she's distracted, he looks too good dressed all in black, and this shirt is making her far too hot.

"Really? You…you're just going to— You're going to do that _now_? Today of all days?"

"Do what exactly?" she asks, tugging at her collar.

"Ignore, avoid, dodge, sidestep, evade…sweep things under the rug, Beckett. You have a better word for it?"

She deflates. "Castle, now is not the time."

"Then tell me when is because with you there's _never_ a perfect time. And I have things I need to say. Things I should have said the other night."

"Well, they'll have to wait. Hand me my hat, would you?"

He watches her affix a quarter-inch black band around the gold of her NYPD shield, obscuring the seal of the city while leaving her badge number clear to read.

"What…what's that? What are you doing?"

"It's a mourning band. We wear them for a period of time after the death of a fellow officer."

"A period? How long?"

"From time of death until 2400 hours on the tenth day after—" She sighs and sets the hat aside, unable to complete the sentence.

"I…I didn't know that. I'm sorry."

"Why are you sorry?" she frowns.

"I'm supposed to be your partner. Today of all days I should…and I didn't even—" He breaks off, running both hands through his hair, disturbing his trademark style with this sudden bout of panic at his own perceived inadequacy.

"Castle?" asks Kate, her brow now knitted in concern for him.

"I'm supposed to be supporting you, Kate, and we're barely even speaking. You can hardly bring yourself to look at me. Not that I blame you."

"Well, maybe you _should_ blame me," she suggests, quietly, watching his face to see how this less angry remark goes down.

"Why would I blame _you?_" He looks genuinely puzzled.

"Because one of us is at fault here and it isn't you."

"Is that an apology?"

"It's about as close as you're going to get today, I'm afraid."

"Then I'll take it."

"Thank you."

"What for?"

"For what you did in the hangar. Protecting me from myself, for stopping me running back in there and..." She swallows, takes a breath. "For being here…with me...today. I wasn't sure when I called if…given everything…" She shrugs.

"Beckett. Kate, if you'll let me, I will _always_ be here. Do you see what I'm saying? What I've been _trying_ to say?"

Kate nods, and he notices her lip begin to tremble.

"_Do you?_" he presses, tilting his head so that he can properly see her face.

"Yes," she whispers hoarsely.

"I just wish I could help you more. That I could be a proper partner to you."

Kate's head rises quickly, tears glistening in her eyes, though they are offset by the fierceness of her look.

"I don't," she says, shaking her head. "If you mean what I think you mean - Academy trained, street blooded, tired and...and cynical. There was a _reason_ I had no partner when you showed up. I didn't want one. I thought I operated better by myself. No one to worry about but the rest of my team, and they all had people watching their backs, so I was free to take care of number one. No distractions. I thought it made me better at my job to be alone. Tougher, stronger, more focused, as if staying a lone wolf was the only way to be."

"And…what? Now you've changed your mind?"

"No, Castle, _you_ changed my mind."

"I see," he says quietly, no sign of the triumphant, smug response she would have at one time expected.

"You made me a better cop because you made me human again. I was working like some kind of machine before."

"Beckett, no, you were—"

She holds up a hand to silence him. "Please let me finish."

Castle nods apologetically for the interruption.

"I was dead when you met me. Sure I interviewed suspects, I filled out forms, I vouchered evidence, I followed leads, I tracked down killers, I fought for justice, and now and again I even stood up in court and I testified to put some scumbag away when the DA hadn't worked out yet another cushy plea deal to save the city more money. I tried to bring a kind of closure to the families I came in contact with at the worst moment of their lives. But I was doing a less than perfect job."

"But your closure rate was—"

"My closure rate looked good at a CompStat meeting. But victim's families don't care about statistics. They only care about getting justice for their loved ones. But they also care about the _why_ of it all. The narrative." And she knows that's the string Richard Castle has helped add to her bow.

"So...what's changed? Do you even know what's changed?"

"_You._ You made me raise my head above the pile of open case files sitting on my desk and look at the world again. You…you invited me into your home, let me spend time with your family. You made me _laugh_, Castle, even when I hated you and laughing was the last thing I wanted to do. You made me. And it turns out that you were good for me. Also turns out that I probably don't know what's best for me most of the time."

"Wow! That's—" He turns in a circle, fingers raking through his hair once more at what is undoubtedly big news. "Why couldn't you have told me this the other night instead of throwing me out?"

"Were you not listening to the last thing I said?"

Castle nods, emitting a small puff of a chuckle. "Right. You did say."

Kate looks at her father's watch. "We don't have long. But…how about I make us coffee and I'll run through how things will go today? Make you feel more prepared."

"That'd be great. How about if I make the coffee…let you finish up in here?"

"Okay, but you'd better let me fix your hair first. I don't want any partner of mine going out looking like that," she smirks, her smile widening and her eyes dancing with warmth when she sees the smile Castle is able to give her back.

"When today is over, I promise we can talk. But let's just get through the funeral first. Okay?" she says, running her brush through Castle's hair until the perfect result he usually achieves for himself is restored.

"There. All good," she tells him when she's done.

His eyes are closed until she reluctantly lifts her fingers away from the warm, smooth hair at the nape of his neck, and he seems to come back into the room from wherever he'd gone.

The silence between them is loaded and heavy with so many things. They regard one another seriously, their eyes locked, unwilling or unable to break the bond they share in that moment, and it's petrifying.

When Castle raises his hand to touch Kate's cheek, caressing the smooth skin with his thumb, she finally has to turn her head away.

"Don't," she murmurs, pulling back from him slightly.

Castle seems to snap out of some kind of trance at this display of discomfort. "I…of course. I'm sorry," he apologizes, though he is instantly confused by the look of disappointment in Kate's eyes.

"I…I didn't mean—" She flounders searching for the right words, for some kind of an explanation that won't set them back too far from the progress they seem to have made.

She takes a breath and reaches out to take his hand, which is now hanging limply by his side. "I don't know about you, but I am hanging by a thread here, Castle. I feel guilty one minute and angry the next. I…I pace the floor of my apartment at night because I can't sleep for trying to figure out how I'm going to face Evelyn and the kids today. How I'm going to _look_ them in the _eye _when I delivery that eulogy. So…please forgive me, but if you touch me again I might break. And I can't afford to break right now. Not today."

Castle gives her hand a squeeze and then he lets go, already backing out of her bedroom to give her the space she needs. "I'll go make that coffee. Come out when you're ready."

Kate nods and bites down hard on her lip as tears of gratitude at his kindness and sympathy bud in her eyes. "Thank you," she whispers, forcing the words out around a stifled sob.

"Always," nods Castle, giving her a sad smile filled with understanding.

* * *

They sit at her kitchen counter drinking coffee a short time later while she fills him in on New York City Police Department funeral protocol. He has been invited to be a pallbearer, along with the rest of the team. Their close-knit group of four will be supplemented by two NYPD volunteers from the Police Department's Ceremonial Unit: entry-level rank officers who have spent many hours outside of their normal line of duty preparing for this task. In all likelihood these two men will never have met Captain Roy Montgomery, and they will not be paid any extra nor will their careers see any advantage from the role that they have opted to undertake today. This is simply about doing the right thing, honoring the life of a fallen officer, carrying on a tradition, and doing a good job for the family left behind.

Kate walks him through it – how she and Espo will take the head of the coffin, since they are of a similar height. They will line up at the rear of the hearse, accompanied by the slow, steady thud of heavy drums provided by the New York City Police Department's Emerald Society Pipes and Drums. When Esposito quietly gives the order "right-face", they will lift in unison. Done correctly and the weight of the flag-covered coffin will not even be felt.

Kate goes on to cover the positioning of departmental flag-bearers, the motorcycle cavalcade that will accompany the hearse. She explains where Castle should take his place for the short service alongside her dad, the boys, Martha and Alexis, and finally the runs through the folding and presentation of the flag to Roy's widow.

When she's done, they stand to face one another in the calm, detached setting of her kitchen. A pause follows in which neither is able to look away from the other. Her breathing seems too loud, her heartbeat that of a heavy bass drum.

"I don't want to upset you, Kate. So please feel free to say no."

Her eyes flicker between his lips and his gaze. "Sounds ominous."

"Would it be okay if I gave you a hug right now?"

Kate almost laughs out loud with relief. Instead she nods shyly and smiles. "Yeah, that'd be great."

He keeps it brief, arms wrapped around her for less than half a minute. Any longer and he figures her shirt will wrinkle, and she looks so pristine that he doesn't want that. Before he fully lets go he brushes a fleeting kiss across her cheekbone.

"Thank you," he nods, straightening up again, tugging on the front of his black suit jacket as if donning a new persona.

"No, thank _you_. For being here. For supporting me today."

"Hey, it's my pleasure. And that's what partners do, right?"

* * *

She collects her hat and her white gloves from the coffee table, and then they solemnly make their way to her front door. When he arrived today, Kate was overwrought with grief and anger. As they leave her apartment now, she feels steady and calm with her partner by her side, ready to face what's coming.

She turns with her hand on the lock to look at Castle, as another thought occurs.

"Would you—" She purses her lips, wondering if this is a good idea or not.

"Anything," encourages Castle. "Ask me anything, Kate."

"Would you stand beside me when I deliver the eulogy? You're my partner after all and I think it might…" She shrugs, trailing off as her cheeks begin to stain a warm shade of pink.

"I'd be honored. Truly honored to stand by your side," nods Castle, giving her elbow a quick squeeze.

This simple request meant a lot to Richard Castle, and without knowing it in advance, Kate Beckett's courage in asking for his help might just have saved her life that day. It certainly heralded the beginnings of a new life for both of them, from out of the depths of a most terrible tragedy.

**_The End_**

* * *

"_Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak _

_Whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break."_

_\- William Shakespeare, Macbeth: Act IV. Scene III._

* * *

_A/N: Love to hear your thoughts. Hope it wasn't too gloomy. I just really like the idea of the mourning band as a mark of respect and remembrance. Check out my friend WRTRD's new story "Get A Grip" if you need some cheering up after this. It's her first Fan Fiction, so let her know what you think. Reviews are love, as we say in this game. :)_


End file.
